Rudolf Barshai began transcribing Shostakovich’s string quartets when the composer was still alive, eventually fleshing out as many as five such works for larger forces. Shostakovich made approving noises about the now familiar Chamber Symphony Op 110a (based on the Eighth String Quartet) and all of them have been recorded previously. I’m not sure why Marina Frolova-Walker’s booklet-note finds the sequence ‘undeservedly obscure’. Least ubiquitous is Eine kleine Symphonie, Op 49a, the First String Quartet as recast in 1995. Barshai set down the lot in Milan late in life but his earlier, incomplete series with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe has greater finesse (DG, 12/05). Should you be seeking a single-CD selection offering comparably committed playing in higher-fi, the present disc certainly looks like a contender.

The Dmitri Ensemble has its own calling card in the Chamber Symphony Op 110a. Its opening Largo is effectively bleached out, not overly slow, its scherzo suitably brutal. There is perhaps a degree of English reserve in the third movement’s sinister waltz. The rendition as a whole is nothing if not fresh and finely poised, the band’s relatively modest forces placed in a generous acoustic (St John the Evangelist, Upper Norwood) without loss of clarity or focus. Indeed, the results are superb, no less lifelike than Channel Classics’ SACD-encoded alternative with the Amsterdam Sinfonietta under Candida Thompson.

The two discs are not directly comparable. Thompson’s group separates Op 110a and Op 118a with Weinberg’s Concertino, Op 42. Graham Ross programmes Shostakovich/Barshai’s Op 49a with its unexpected smidgeon of celesta, obtaining a defter response than the conductor/arranger himself. Many will prefer an all-Shostakovich programme even if Ross’s take on Op 118a feels insufficiently vehement. Perhaps it’s simply that the music’s furioso element is blunted by the makeover. Likewise the intense loneliness of the passacaglia slow movement, flowing just a little too easily. Recommended nevertheless.